Articles
Browse every published article connected to Liz Weber, with exact attribution and full-archive search.
Articles
Browse every published article connected to Liz Weber, or search within this exact expert archive.
I was recently asked by an executive team, "How do we start pulling a Succession Plan together? We believe we have many of the pieces already, but we don't know what to do with them." That's a great question and a great position to be in. The answer though, requires you to first be clear on what ...
Recently a colleague asked me for advice to help him with one of his clients. My colleague's been working with this particular client for several years, but it's getting to a point of frustration where my colleague's ready to walk away. The manager -- or as my colleague now calls him -- The ...
We've all had this experience at least once in our professional lives: We've held off firing an employee because we didn't want to be mean. We didn't want to hurt the person's feelings, cause more disruption in his or her personal life, or we simply didn't want to have that difficult ...
Here's something you already know: it's hard to find good, well-skilled employees. However, here's a truly scary fact: according to The Herman Group, national surveys are predicting that within 12 months, 75% of today's workers will be employed somewhere else. That fact alone should be enough ...
Are you being fair with your managers? Are you sharing critical information with them in a timely manner? Are you developing performance standards for them and the company and then not sharing those standards with them? If you answered, "Yes, Yes, and No" that's great. But stop and really think ...
A manager recently asked me, "My back-up person is incredible. When she retires -- which she's eligible do at any moment -- we'll be in big trouble. My problem is: How do I train someone else to do her job, without taking responsibilities away from her? I don't want to hurt her feelings and make ...
I had the opportunity to provide the keynote address at a client's annual team meeting in New York recently. For most organizations these types of events are honestly, quite boring and attended only by those employees who couldn't come up with a believable excuse not to attend. This ...
We recently started a six-month leadership training program with a new client. The participants are accepted into the program only after they have been nominated by someone at or above their position in the company, and they have successfully passed the program's interview process. This ...
Yep, I heard it again. A new client, a CEO, told my team prior to our first work session, "I want my life back. I love working, but I've got to stop working 90-100 hour weeks. Something's gotto change around here." Sounds logical and completely reasonable to me. But how do youget your life back ...
I recently received a thank you note from Matt, one of my nephews. I had helped him revise his resume and practice for interviews, as he needed to "get" a co-op in his final semester of college in order to graduate. Matt wrote that he had "gotten" a great co-op position with a company that has ...
We're working with several organizations helping them prepare their next tier of managers to eventually take over the senior leadership positions. However, before we focus on developing this next tier of managers, we spend a good bit of time working with the current senior leadership team to ...
I thought I'd take a moment to simply clarify the difference betwee Advisory Boards and Boards of Directors. People often believe they're one-in-the-same and use the terms interchangeably. In reality, they're very different entities. Both are valuable, but they wield different levels of ...
I just finished Mitch Albom's 'the five people you meet in heaven.' It's an interesting quick read. And it left me, as I'm sure it does all readers, wondering who I'd meet if I were to have a similar post-life experience. Just as Mr. Albom's main character meets individuals whose lives he ...
I had an interesting conversation the other day with a client. We were discussing her company's strategic plan and the next step: the succession plan. I was outlining for her the basic steps to identifying the responsibilities of key positions when she asked a great question: "Just what is a ...
With the potential for layoffs facing more and more companies, the realities of laying off great workers is confronting many business owners and managers: owners and managers who have never before faced this hard act. To help ease the pain for the employees being laid off, the owners and ...
I received a telephone call recently from a client desperately trying to fill a vacancy in her accounting office. After describing the situation she read the position description to me. Among other general items, it noted, "At least three years of accounting experience." Well that's just dandy, ...
Have you ever been hungry for lunch and not able to focus on anything, let alone accomplish anything, until you get some food? Your focus is on one thing: getting food -- now. That becomes your foremost goal and the direction of your actions. Everything else is put aside or is addressed only ...
A senior manager recently asked what the difference was between a manager and a leader. I told her. A manager is responsible for taking care of the here and now. A manager ensures the resources are used efficiently, and plans for maximum utilization of staff, equipment, materials, and capital. A ...
Employee retention is a hot topic. Every employer knows it's terribly expensive, time consuming, and disruptive to operations to repeatedly recruit, hire, train, and then lose employees. There are many reasons employees leave their jobs. However, time and again, employees leave because of ...
I messed up - big time. I knew deep in my gut something had to be wrong, but for some reason, I didn't have a frank, direct conversation with Joseph. During our numerous status meetings, I had accepted his rationalizations of a hectic travel schedule, numerous new team members, and uncooperative ...
I was speaking with a client recently about his company's heir-apparent: his son. He wants his son to take over as the company "leader" in a few years. His son is very organized. He runs a solid department, manages his staff well, satisfies customers 90+% of the time, and manages his project and ...
A client recently asked me to help him identify leadership skills his son would need to develop to help him successfully takeover and lead the family business in a few years. He also wants to be able to evaluate all his managers on these skills on a scale of 1 (none/low) to 5 ...
We've heard over and over "Add value for your customers!" But what does that mean? According to Webster's Dictionary, VALUE means "Monetary or material worth". Therefore, "Add value for your customers" must mean we have to add some thing (product, service, or other benefit) that adds tangible ...
So what are we supposed to do? What are they looking for? Why don't they just tell us what they want? I hear these and similar questions from employees fairly frequently as they try to determine what their managers really want them to do with a project. What are they supposed to deliver? The ...
Do you provide a good product or service to your customers? Do you ship orders on time? Are your employees well-trained and professional with each other and with your customers? Do you address customer problems as soon as they arise? If you do all of these things - good. That's your job. Your ...
Have you ever gone into a store and had a heck of a time trying to find what you wanted? You finally had to have someone lead you to it because the store's signage was poor. Like me, you probably thought, "Why don't they just put up clear signage?" Have you ever tried to reorder from one of your ...
If your organization is like most, the summer months passed by very quickly. This was due to the normal work requirements. However, it was also compounded by the added pressures of employee vacation schedules. With employees taking leave, covering the work of those who are on leave, and trying ...
It's happening again. We've been contacted by several clients all dealing with the same issue: current top management is ready to move on (retire, sell, quit, transfer to a new division, etc.) and there's no staff ready or able to replace them. The problem from the clients' perspective is: How ...
I provided a seminar on Business and Marketing Plans for a group of senior managers recently. At the end of the session, during our final question and answer session, one attendee said, "I understand the value in everything you've shared today, but what can I do to increase sales right ...
I've just started working with a client who desperately needs to increase sales. His company hired a new sales representative over a month ago. Together they identified key current customers to visit and penetrate further. They decided to focus on this group first, then they'd focus on getting ...
We've hit that part of the Strategic Planning process with a few of our clients: It's time for them to put what they've developed to the test. Specifically, a few clients are facing difficult situations with select key staff members. These tough situations are requiring top management to either ...
The March 2006 issue of the Harvard Business Review had a great article by Robert Morison, Tamara Erickson, and Ken Dychtwald entitled "Managing Middlescence." Their article addressed the mid-career employees, aged 35 to 54, who "should be at their peak of productivity," but instead "are the ...
A beautiful thing happened during a client work session this week: the management team experienced the value of clear, honest communication. For some time this client has been under the incorrect assumption that its management team communicated well with each other. Yet invariably when I'd have ...
I learned this week that a client started a program in which every manager is part of a team to help less-experienced staff learn basic project management techniques. Each team will identify and work on a project collaboratively. The overall intent is to not only enhance the project management ...
I just got off the phone with a prospective client. They have serious employee and management retention issues. They have few managers with the right skills to be effective managers, let alone develop into effective leaders, they have a multitude of staff with less-than-effective front-line ...
Do you work 11, 12, or 14 hour days and never get ahead? Do you believe that the more tasks you physically do yourself, the greater your chances are you can inspire your staff to do more? Yet, do you wonder why no one seems to be working as hard or caring as much as you? One reason for your ...
A client recently asked me for guidance on how she should gauge her managers' understanding of their organization's strategic plan. She doesn't believe her managers fully appreciate how important their roles are in ensuring the plan succeeds. She fears they believe it is up to the executive ...
My company is working with several clients who are at that stage of their business planning process where we're analyzing their marketing strategies. An obvious component of this step is revising or developing marketing materials that convey the "right" message, to the "right" target market, to ...
I heard Greg Caruso of Successful Exits share a story recently that I found valuable for my clients because of its simplicity and truth. When he was young, Greg loved to fish. When he grew older, life got in the way until one day he made a conscientious decision to restart his childhood hobby. ...
A client was experiencing some employee performance issues and asked us to present training to their managers on a new employee performance evaluation form. Terrific. However, they weren't thrilled when I told them that the training should only focus about 10 percent of the time on the actual ...
I had a difficult experience this past week: I had to practice what I preach. I had to listen to someone share her criticisms, suggestions, and proposed new procedures for an organizatio I have been heavily involved with for the past five years. And here's the tough part, I had to force myself ...
Every day, there are stories in the media discussing the importance of succession planning, yet many of us business owners aren't paying heed. According to a global study released by Korn Ferry International, "40% or less of organizations today have a capable CEO-in-waiting." Also, according to ...
It's been happening more and more. Clients are complaining about their managers' inappropriate behaviors, lack of management skills, and inability to take on greater responsibilities. Yet, when I ask what they've done to discuss the problem areas with their managers, I'm told, "It won't do any ...
It's happening again. I'm witnessing a new "leader" become ineffective and the senior team's confidence in him is starting to lag. The leader is losing his effectiveness even though he's already implemented several much needed programs for the organization. He's losing his effectiveness because ...
A manager approached me this week after a work session to seek my advice on how he should address one of his employees. This employee is increasingly becoming trouble; he's more often than not selecting which projects and which elements of each project to work on. When the manager has asked the ...
One of the professional organizations to which I belong has had its theme for the year: Keep It Real. It is meant to encourage us members to truly be experts in what we proclaim to be and do. To be honest, when I first heard the theme, I thought: Boring! However, over the past several months, ...
Implementing plans is normally the hardest and most frustrating part of any business planning or business development activity. You have to implement a plan that has not yet been proven successful, in addition to dealing with new crises and unanticipated obstacles. The planning process was ...
A client recently told me she believes one of her key employees may be looking for a different job. My client was nervous and a bit "defeated." Her employee is smart, efficient, organized, and articulate. She gets along with everyone, works on any project you ask her to, and is willing to try ...
According to an article in the July 2006 issue of Benefits & Compensation Digest entitled: Balance Short-Term Profit with Long-Term Investment in Human Capital: "The Labor Department...recorded by 2008 the growth of the U.S. Workforce is projected to drop to near zero and remain at that level ...
We've been doing a lot of work with clients lately on fine-tuning their marketing efforts. A crucial step in this process is getting crystal-clear on just who they want as customers. Now I know this sounds like a somewhat strange activity. But you'd be amazed at the number of businesses who ...